Quote:
Demetrio Cereijo wrote:
Focusing in the positives, of course. Was not the MT incident part of the positives?
Regards.
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Well, of course it turned out that way for me. I had taught a class during that Expo... but because there were so many classes going on simultaneously, with some of the real "big names" as well, I had about eight to ten folks in my class of whom all but one or two already had trained with me at some previous time. So it wasn't that great from the standpoint of making new connections.
Then, Tennenhouse threw his back out trying to do a double leg on me (I didn't even sprawl in an attempt NOT to hurt him, I merely stepped back into hanmi and grabbed his obi and held his butt in the air so he couldn't drive me back on my heels)...
Within an hour people I had never met, had no idea who they were, cam up to me asking if "I was the guy who'd
taken out Tennenhouse?" I had no idea that many people knew about Tennenhouse... sure as hell a lot more than knew who I was... probably an example of that saying that "no publicity is bad publicity". By the end of the Expo, far more people knew me as the guy who had taken out Tennenhouse than had seen any of my Aikido... Ellis even ended up writing a piece explaining that I had not, in any way, done anything to hurt the fellow. I was going to get a t-shirt that said "I didn't do it".
Anyway, the guy was clearly not tracking. It would have been like injuring a handicapped person. I was actually trying to help him when he hurt himself because it was so apparent he hadn't a clue.